Morgan County officials complete ClearGov training, agree on bank-interest policy and fund accounting changes

Morgan County commissioners and staff completed a hands-on ClearGov training during a Sept. 2 budget work session and directed staff to adopt several bookkeeping practices intended to make individual fund balances and program costs easier to track.

The training, led by county staff, showed commissioners how to drill into fund balances, review worksheets for FY25 actuals and FY26 requests, and attach documentation to specific line items in ClearGov. "The beauty of ClearGov is when we've gone in before, you've kind of gone in blind because you had no idea what was in the fund balance of all of these funds," one trainer said, demonstrating a dashboard view of fund-level revenues and expenditures.

Why it matters: Commissioners said that clearer fund accounting will let them match revenue and expenses to the funds that actually carry them — a change that could alter how the county budgets for parks, airport operations and other enterprise-style activities.

What the county agreed to - Annual bank-interest allocation: Commissioners agreed, by verbal majority during the session, to allocate bank interest to the funds that earned it once a year at year-end, rather than leave interest in a single general-revenue balance. Staff said the county has received as much as $40,000–$50,000 in recent years and that the amount varies by calendar year. - Greenbelt rollback revenue: Commissioners directed staff to begin treating greenbelt rollback receipts as revenues to the newly created Greenbelt fund starting with collections on or after June 1; prior greenbelt receipts that were historically recorded to delinquent-tax revenue will not be reallocated retroactively without a separate decision. - Fund consolidation for utilities and facilities: Commissioners asked staff to move the expenses that properly belong to the airport and the rifle range into those new funds so the county can show a single, auditable cost of operating those facilities. By contrast, commissioners agreed that park-rental revenues should be captured in individual park funds while day-to-day parks maintenance expenses will remain in the director’s parks budget, so rental revenue can accumulate for park-specific improvements. - Two policy drafts requested: County staff were asked to prepare two policies for commission review: (1) centralize employee-appreciation and hospitality spending so that routine office snacks and staff lunches come from a single employee-appreciation budget; and (2) require county commission approval before department heads purchase items that must be added to county insurance (for example, golf carts) so that the commission may review insurance impacts before purchases are finalized.

Supporting details and next steps The training covered navigating ClearGov dashboards, exporting detailed worksheets, adding line-item attachments and comments, and using filters to locate fund 16 (ramp tax), fund 17 (local option) and other fund-specific account IDs. Staff said some historical data for newly created funds will show zeros for older years until entries are migrated.

Commissioners asked staff to return with formal draft language for the two policies and with specific journal entries and transfer proposals to move airport and rifle-range expense lines into the new funds. No formal ordinance or budget amendment was adopted at the meeting; the session produced direction to staff and verbal approvals for the items listed above.

Quotes from the session "The beauty of ClearGov is when we've gone in before, you've kind of gone in blind because you had no idea what was in the fund balance of all of these funds," a trainer said during the demonstration.

Ending Staff will prepare the written policies and proposed budget entries for a future meeting; commissioners said they want the ClearGov work to continue through the formal budget weeks and to use the tool to make fund-by-fund decisions rather than relying on general-fund assumptions.